LMI English for Special Purposes Project is Launched

On December 13, 2011, the Lower Mekong Initiative English project, “Professional Communication Skills for Leaders” was launched.  Organized in collaboration with the Government of Thailand and the U.S. Department of State, the program is part of the Lower Mekong Initiative’s Education pillar, and it will give government officials from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam specialized English-language training in the fields of Environment, Health, and Infrastructure Development.  The State Department funded the travel of four “English Language Fellows” to this training so that leaders from the four countries will be able to work more effectively with their regional and international partners.  The English Language Fellows are Americans who all hold Masters Degrees with a focus on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).  They will participate in 10-month long fellowships in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The program was officially launched through a four-day orientation program at the Chulalongkorn University Language Institute in Bangkok.  Dr. Piniti Ratananukul, Deputy Secretary-General of the Office of Higher Education and Thailand’s Co-Chair for the Education Pillar, officially opened the orientation for the four LMI English Language Fellows and their host-country co-teachers who traveled from Vietnam, Cambodia and the Lao PDR to join their Thai counterparts.  Damon Anderson, Regional English Language Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, represented the United States, and he was joined by staff from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who will coordinate specific technical content areas and participant selection.  The participants formed a strong English project team, and they agreed upon a schedule of seminars as well as a seminar template that will be used in developing each of the project’s seminars to be carried out in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Lao PDR, and Thailand through September 2012.